Talks Could Lead China, Taiwan Toward Unity

SHANGHAI, China - After a three-year hiatus, China and Taiwan resumed talks Wednesday that will touch on potential reunification of the island with mainland China.

The highest-ranking member of Taiwan's ruling party ever to meet with Chinese officials arrived in this bustling metropolis for a four-day stay.

Koo Chen-fu, Taiwan's top negotiator, landed in Shanghai on a flight from Hong Kong because Taiwan still bans direct flights to China.

Koo huddled with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Daohan, at the Peace Hotel, one of the cornerstones of Shanghai's historic riverside promenade, known as the Bund.

More than 200 Taiwanese journalists have gone to China to cover the talks, which started in Shanghai and move Friday to Beijing, where Koo will also meet with China's President Jiang Zemin and Qian Qichen, one of China's foreign-policy elite.

The talks represent an important milestone in Chinese-Taiwanese relations, although no one expects the two sides to make real progress toward reunification for many years.

China reabsorbed Hong Kong in 1997 and will take over the Portuguese-administered territory of Macau next year. Its leaders are eager to bring Taiwan, which has been separated from China since 1895, back into the Chinese fold.

Many of Taiwan's 21 million people, however, oppose unifying with a Communist country. They have a flourishing democracy and increasingly are developing a separate identity from China.

Still, the two sides have tried to create a better atmosphere in the run-up to the talks. Beijing dropped its demand that they focus on reunification. Taiwan dropped its insistence that the talks deal only with practical issues such as illegal immigrants and ways to protect the $35 billion that Taiwanese businesses have invested in China.

Wednesday, Koo said he would not ``exclude addressing political issues'' in his talks with Wang. Zhou Jianming, a senior Chinese scholar, said mainland China is willing to address ways to protect Taiwanese investments and other practical issues.

Two years ago last spring, China was launching missiles over Taiwan. It had stopped talks with Taiwan in 1995 out of pique that Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui had secured a visa to the United States, where he addressed the 50th reunion of his class at Cornell University.

Taiwan, meanwhile, was angling for international recognition, writing checks to African and Caribbean nations in exchange for diplomatic recognition.